Decoupage Art...Sort of.

A while ago (although I think it was only two or three posts ago, because I'm suffering from ICan'tFindTheWordsToWriteButYouCouldProbablyCallMeOnThePhone and have not been very chatty...in the writey form) I mentioned my new little robot piece I had made for Foolsewoode...?  It's so very sweet, so if you'd like to scroll down I'll wait.

OK.

Isn't it just darling?

Well, take my word for it, it is even better in person and sadly, not big enough to take up the entire wall above the mantel, although I'm not sure I'd want a piece quite that large (only I have one, but I can't remember if my father has it, or if I have it...and it needs to be framed.  Anywho...) I decided it was floating around on the wall all sad like, so it needed some kind of art companions.

Now, I happen to live with a lot of art.  I love art...and it mostly loves me back, in the fact that it hangs on the wall and is beautiful just for me.  Well, and my guests.  And my cat.  And my lovely house mate DaNece...you get the picture.  But sadly, none of the art I posses was quite right in that spot.  Either it was the wrong size or the wrong subject matter...so I had to really think about this.

Which led me to finally do something with the stack of windows I have that lean against the wall by the mantle.  They originally came from an estate sale in town and are a light pink with green showing through all the crackled paint.  The have their original green glass knobs, and some 1920's looking hinges.  They used to live outside all individually leaning against the house under the picture window (for lack of a better place to put them) and when I had the house repainted, they clashed and had to find a new place to live.

Which really means that they sat in a stack leaning against the wall...and trapped dust, dirt, and spiders behind them.  Every once in a while I would trip over them and then think they needed to go elsewhere, leave them there, and go on my merry way.

Luckily, along came Robot and Sock Monkey and I was finally forced inspired to do something with these windows, because I couldn't possibly get rid of them, and tripping over them wasn't doing anyone any good!

I took the rather shiny and glaring hinges off of them exposing the dark unpainted wood underneath, and proceeded to clean them up (because I'd just hauled them in out of the elements and commenced to stacking, so they were dirty.  While that made the paint age and crackle even more...it made the glass quite dirty.  Ahem...)  Because the knobs were still on the windows, and they were connected to their original hardware, which basically means there's a hook extending from the windows about an inch...which then basically means to us, that they won't lay flat against the wall when hung...it was off to the hardware to figure out the best way to hang them so they would remain mostly stable.

Since they were being hung by a canvas, I decided to use round hooks (is that fish eye?) and attach some random wire I happened to have in the junk drawer to them and then hang them on picture hangers nailed to the wall.  They are stable, and don't extend any more than the canvas they hang next to, so problem solved!

But now what to do with clean shiny blank windows to make them look like art?

Well...I guess you could run hither and fro and gather all the little pieces of mail, art, cards, prints, fortunes, souvenirs...and all those little sweet things that you can't possibly bring yourself to throw away or get rid of, and use them to create seasonal and sweet little displays (with tape ThankYouVeryMuch) on that clean shiny glass of those beautiful little windows that are finally serving a greater purpose than an obstacle to jump over whenever you walk through the room.

I just adore these little thrown together pieces of art and happy reminders of things I adore, and have absolutely no idea how I did not have them hanging there all along?

Of course, this whole wall art overhaul started with me taking down the three pieces of art that had previously hung on that wall and moving them somewhere else entirely...I will take a few quick snapshots and show you how that all ended up soon...